Anthropic is chasing a valuation of up to $1.4 trillion and plans to raise as much as $90 billion in its initial public offering, according to its recent regulatory filing. The AI startup's roadshow — the series of pitches companies run to win over fund managers before listing — started yesterday, and shares are expected to price between $70 and $78.

An official go-public date hasn't been set. The end of next week looks like the likely candidate.

What's already locked in?

Plenty. Investors have committed to buying $26 billion of Anthropic shares at the IPO price, whatever that price turns out to be. That money isn't coming from the general market, though. It's a private placement running alongside the listing, and the buyer list reads like a who's-who of the AI arms race: Broadcom, Google, and Nvidia.

That lineup highlights a criticism that has followed the industry for two years — circular financing. The term describes a loop in which AI's biggest suppliers and partners effectively fund their own customers, recycling capital through the ecosystem rather than bringing in money from outside it.

Business Insider's Joe Ciolli, author of the First Trade newsletter, unpacked the decision to bolt an AI-heavy private placement onto the IPO. His framing is blunt: Anthropic's IPO is an investor referendum on AI.

Why does this feel like a vote?

The last time the broader public weighed in on AI, things went badly for the tech. The midterms are the reference point. Investors aren't general voters, of course. Their questions aren't about data centers in their backyards; they're about whether Anthropic is a business that keeps the stock price climbing after they buy in.

The filing itself doesn't make that an easy sell. Anthropic's paperwork shows the soaring compute cost required to keep revenue growing, and public investors will have to decide whether that trade-off still works at a $1.4 trillion ceiling.

Is there a cautionary tale?

Brian Boland knows one firsthand. He was a vice president at Facebook during its disastrous 2012 IPO, and he spoke to BI's Stephen Council about that experience — and the similarities he sees with Anthropic's looming debut.

Facebook, now Meta, eventually figured it out. But recovery took more than a year before the stock closed above its IPO price. The stakes are higher this time. With so much capital riding on AI, it's unclear whether the market could stomach an AI darling underperforming for that long.

Who wins regardless?

One group is already ahead, whatever the stock does on day one — and it isn't just early investors and employees cashing out. Anthropic has budgeted $41.5 million in legal fees for the IPO, a staggering figure that's nearly double what SpaceX planned for its own record-breaking listing.

The lawyers get paid either way. Everyone else is waiting on the roadshow, the pricing, and a market verdict on whether the AI trade still has room to run.